Psychopathy and physiological responses to adrenalin.

Made physiological recordings while 16 psychopaths (P), 16 nonpsychopaths (NP), and 16 "mixed" (M) Ss received a saline injection, followed 15 min. later by an adrenalin injection. Tonic skin conductance of Group NP was generally greater than that of Groups M and P, a difference that increased throughout the course of the experiment. There were no significant group differences in tonic heart rate (HR), respiration rate, blink rate, or electromyogram (EMG) activity. Both saline and adrenalin injections produced sharp increases in skin conductance, blink rate, digital vasoconstriction, and EMG activity, but these changes were more persistent with adrenalin. Adrenalin also produced large and prolonged increases in HR, while saline had virtually no effect. There were no significant differences between groups in responsivity except in electrodermal activity the increases in skin conductance following saline and adrenalin were smaller in Group P than in Group NP. Physiological responses given by each group were unrelated to scores on the Activity Preference Questionnaire. Results do not support earlier claims that psychopaths show extreme cardiac lability in response to adrenalin, but are consistent with the view that psychopaths are electrodermally hypoactive. (25 ref.) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Classical discrimination eyelid conditioning in primary psychopaths.

Compared conditioning rates of 29 psychopaths and 24 nonpsychopaths on classical eyelid discrimination. Psychopaths produced fewer CRs to both CS+ and CS- over 3 instructional sets. Although less responsive, psychopaths were not poorer discrimination learners according to a signal detection analysis of the data. Psychopaths' CR latency, amplitude, and slope were similar to those of nonpsychopaths. Results suggest that psychopaths are not inferior conditioners to negative reinforcement, but rather that they employ different response sets than nonpsychopaths. (19 ref.) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Latent inhibition in humans: Single-cue conditioning revisited.

Latent inhibition in human Pavlovian conditioning was assessed by way of autonomic responses. In Exp 1 (N?=?72), 3 pairs of conditioning and control groups were preexposed to 0, 10, or 20 to-be-conditioned stimuli (to-be-CSs), respectively. Acquistion of electrodermal 1st-interval and heart rate response conditioning were detectable only in the zero preexposure condition. However, 20 preexposures were needed for latent inhibition of vasomotor response conditioning. In Exp 2 (N?=?48), preexposure to the to-be-CS was compared with preexposure to a stimulus that was not presented during subsequent acquisition. CS preexposure completely abolished electrodermal 1st-interval and heart rate response conditioning. Although vasomotor conditioning was not affected by preexposure, latent inhibition of 2nd-interval electrodermal response conditioning was obtained. Taken together, the data from both experiments provide clear evidence for latent inhibition in human Pavlovian conditioning. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Semantic generalization in French and English bilinguals.

In order to examine between-language generalization (BLG), eight two-syllable French and English words were presented, with half of the words in each language paired with shock. After this conditioning procedure shock was withheld and one translated equivalent of each word was presented. GSRs, digital and cephalic vasomotor activity were recorded. Responses to the translations of the words paired with shock were greater than to the translations of the neutral words. The results were accepted as an illustration of BLG and were discussed in relation to the dynamics of semantic systems and bilingual typing. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Male psychopaths and their criminal careers.

Cross-sectional and longitudinal analyses were used to examine the criminal histories of male psychopaths and nonpsychopaths. Dependent variables included time spent in prison and conviction rates during each 5-year period between the ages of 16–45 years. Both types of analysis indicated that the criminal activities of nonpsychopaths were relatively constant over the years, whereas those of psychopaths remained high until around age 40, after which they declined dramatically. Nevertheless, more than half of the subjects in each group still received at least one conviction after age 40. The results are consistent with clinical impressions that some psychopaths tend to "burn out" in middle age. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Psychopathy and the allocation of attentional capacity in a divided-attention situation.

Investigated the hypothesis that psychopaths allocate most of their attentional capacity to stimuli and responses of immediate interest by assessing psychopaths' dual-task performance under 2 instructional sets. Using R. D. Hare's (see record 1985-22847-001) psychopathology checklist, 72 White male prison inmates (approximate mean age 25 yrs) were classified as psychopaths or nonpsychopaths. It was hypothesized that psychopaths would divide attention adequately between a visual search and probe reaction time (RT) task, but that when instructions defined the search as Ss' primary task, psychopaths would overfocus on it and outperform nonpsychopaths at the cost of relatively poor secondary task performance. Results challenge the validity of the overfocusing hypothesis. S groups performed equally well on the search when it received instructional priority, but psychopaths made more search errors under divided-attention instructions. Psychopaths also responded more slowly than nonpsychopaths to auditory probes across conditions. Results suggest that psychopaths may incur relatively large capacity costs in attempting to shift their attentional resources between processing tasks. (22 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Facial affect recognition in criminal psychopaths.

Prior studies provide consistent evidence of deficits for psychopaths in processing verbal emotional material but are inconsistent regarding nonverbal emotional material. To examine whether psychopaths exhibit general versus specific deficits in nonverbal emotional processing, 34 psychopaths and 33 nonpsychopaths identified with Hare's (R. D. Hare, 1991) Psychopathy Checklist-Revised were asked to complete a facial affect recognition test. Slides of prototypic facial expressions were presented. Three hypotheses regarding hemispheric lateralization anomalies in psychopaths were also tested (right-hemisphere dysfunction, reduced lateralization, and reversed lateralization). Psychopaths were less accurate than nonpsychopaths at classifying facial affect under conditions promoting reliance on right-hemisphere resources and displayed a specific deficit in classifying disgust. These findings demonstrate that psychopaths exhibit specific deficits in nonverbal emotional processing. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Psychopathy, threat, and polygraph test accuracy.

The accuracy of the control question polygraph test with psychopaths was evaluated within a realistically threatening context. Subjects were 24 psychopathic and 24 nonpsychopathic male prison inmates. Within each diagnostic group, equal numbers of "guilty" and "innocent" subjects were tested by experienced professional polygraphers regarding their involvement in a mock theft by using standard control question procedures. A group contingency threat was devised in which subjects believed that their personal performance could decide benefits or penalties for the sample as a whole. Guilty psychopaths were detected just as easily as guilty nonpsychopaths, and the majority of guilty subjects (87%, excluding inconclusives) were correctly identified. However, innocent subjects were identified with only 56% accuracy, and an analysis of false positive errors suggested that the subjective impact of the threat was a critical factor in these outcomes. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Aberrant neural processing of moral violations in criminal psychopaths.

A defining characteristic of psychopathy is the willingness to intentionally commit moral transgressions against others without guilt or remorse. Despite this “moral insensitivity,” the behavioral and neural correlates of moral decision-making in psychopathy have not been well studied. To address this issue, the authors used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to record hemodynamic activity in 72 incarcerated male adults, stratified into psychopathic (n = 16) and nonpsychopathic (n = 16) groups based on scores from the Hare Psychopathy Checklist—Revised (R. D. Hare, 2003), while they made decisions regarding the severity of moral violations of pictures that did or did not depict moral situations. Consistent with hypotheses, an analysis of brain activity during the evaluation of pictures depicting moral violations in psychopaths versus nonpsychopaths showed atypical activity in several regions involved in moral decision-making. This included reduced moral/nonmoral picture distinctions in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex and anterior temporal cortex in psychopaths relative to nonpsychopaths. In a separate analysis, the association between severity of moral violation ratings and brain activity across participants was compared in psychopaths versus nonpsychopaths. Results revealed a positive association between amygdala activity and severity ratings that was greater in nonpsychopaths than psychopaths, and a negative association between posterior temporal activity and severity ratings that was greater in psychopaths than nonpsychopaths. These results reveal potential neural underpinnings of moral insensitivity in psychopathy and are discussed with reference to neurobiological models of morality and psychopathy. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

In cold blood: Characteristics of criminal homicides as a function of psychopathy.

This study investigated the relationship between psychopathy and the characteristics of criminal homicides committed by a sample of 125 Canadian offenders. It was hypothesized that the homicides committed by psychopathic offenders would be more likely to be primarily instrumental (i.e., associated with premeditation, motivated by an external goal, and not preceded by a potent affective reaction) or "cold-blooded" in nature, whereas homicides committed by nonpsychopaths often would be "crimes of passion" associated with a high level of impulsivity/reactivity and emotionality. The results confirmed these predictions; homicides committed by psychopathic offenders were significantly more instrumental than homicides by nonpsychopaths. Nearly all (93.3%) of the homicides by psychopaths were primarily instrumental in nature compared with 48.4% of the homicides by nonpsychopaths. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Reduced lateralization in verbal dichotic listening in adolescent psychopaths.

One possible explanation for previous findings of abnormal linguistic processing in psychopaths is that they are less lateralized for verbal processes. This study tests the hypothesis that adolescent psychopaths show evidence of reduced lateralization on a verbal dichotic listening task. Four self-report and behavioral measures of psychopathy were used to define psychopathy using cluster analytic techniques in 40 juvenile offenders aged 13 to 18 years. Psychopaths were found to have reduced ear asymmetries relative to nonpsychopaths, a result indicating reduced lateralization for verbal material. The effect does not appear to be mediated by group differences in age, ethnic background, IQ, overall performance, left-handedness, selective attention to one ear, or interhemispheric transfer deficits. This result suggests that the previous finding by R. D. Hare and L. M. McPherson (see record 1984-23362-001) is robust, provides some preliminary validity for the assessment of psychopathy before age 18, and indicates initial support for the utility of cluster analytic techniques in the assessment of psychopathy. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Passive avoidance learning in psychopathic and nonpsychopathic offenders.

Research on passive avoidance learning has demonstrated reliable differences between psychopaths and controls when avoidance errors result in electric shock but not in loss of money. Using monetary punishments, J. P. Newman et al (see record 1985-22847-001) found that psychopathic delinquents performed more poorly than controls in an experimental paradigm employing monetary reward as well as the avoidance contingency. The present study was conducted to replicate and extend these findings using adult psychopaths and a computer controlled task. 60 White male prisoners (mean age approximately 25 yrs) were assigned to psychopathic or nonpsychopathic groups using R. D. Hare's psychopathy checklist and the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-III). Ss were administered a "go/no-go" discrimination task involving monetary incentives. One condition entailed competing reward and punishment contingencies; the other, 2 punishment contingencies. As predicted, psychopaths made significantly more passive avoidance errors than nonpsychopaths when the task contained competing goals but performed as well as controls when the Ss' only goal was avoiding punishment. Results corroborate earlier findings that psychopaths are relatively poor at learning to inhibit reward-seeking behavior that results in monetary punishment. (22 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The psychopath as observer: Emotion and attention in picture processing.

This study extended prior work showing abnormal affect–startle modulation in psychopaths. Male prisoners viewed specific categories of pleasant (erotic or thrilling) and unpleasant (victim or direct threat) slide pictures, along with neutral pictures. Acoustic startle probes were presented early (300 and 800 ms) and late (1,800, 3,000, and 4,500 ms) in the viewing interval. At later times, nonpsychopaths showed moderate and strong reflex potentiation for victim and threat scenes, respectively. For psychopaths, startle was inhibited during victim scenes and only weakly potentiated during threat. Psychopaths also showed more reliable blink inhibition across pleasant contents than nonpsychopaths and greater heart rate orienting to affective pictures overall. These results indicate a heightened aversion threshold in psychopaths. In addition, deficient reflex modulation at early times suggested a weakness in initial stimulus evaluation among psychopaths. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Cognitive abstraction, shifting, and control: Clinical sample comparisons of psychopaths and nonpsychopaths.

Gorenstein (1982) suggested that psychopaths exhibit deficits in cognitive processes commonly associated with frontal lobe functioning, but other investigators reported collecting findings (Hare, 1984; Sutker, Moan, & Allain, 1983). There is also evidence indicating that intellectual level influences performances in measures of frontal lobe integrity and mitigates against expression of cognitive dyscontrol especially among psychopaths. The present study extended previous research by comparing clinical samples of psychopaths and nonpsychopaths identified by object instrument and behavioral self-report data. Dependent measures included test of concept formation, abstraction, flexibility, planning, and control. Compared to men defined as normal controls, male psychopaths showed no greater deficits in abstraction, flexibility, control, or planning. Intelligence significantly influenced performances on dependent measures for both groups. Results suggest that analogies between psychopathy and frontal lobe deficits are premature, if not unsupported. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Facial expressions as conditioned stimuli for electrodermal responses: A case of "preparedness"?

Converging data suggest that human facial behavior has an evolutionary basis. Combining these data with M. E. Seligman's (1970) preparedness theory, it was predicted that facial expressions of anger should be more readily associated with aversive events than should expressions of happiness. Two experiments involving differential electrodermal conditioning to pictures of faces, with electric shock as the unconditioned stimulus, were performed. In the 1st experiment, 32 undergraduates were exposed to 2 pictures of the same person, 1 with an angry and 1 with a happy expression. For half of the Ss, the shock followed the angry face, and for the other half, it followed the happy face. In the 2nd experiment, 3 groups of 48 undergraduates differentiated between pictures of male and female faces, both showing angry, neutral, and happy expressions. Responses to angry CSs showed significant resistance to extinction in both experiments, with a larger effect in Exp II. Responses to happy or neutral CSs, on the other hand, extinguished immediately when the shock was withheld. Results are related to conditioning to phobic stimuli and to the preparedness theory. (22 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Classical differential and operant conditioning in rabbits (Oryctolagus cuniculus) with septal lesions.

12 normal New Zealand white rabbits and 12 with septal lesions received classical differential conditioning of the nictitating membrane response (NMR), followed by auditory generalization tests run in extinction. Although rate of acquisition and asymptotic responding to positive conditioned stimuli did not differ, septals responded more than normals to nonreinforced stimuli. Resultant decrements in differential conditioning could not be attributed to changes in auditory or shock thresholds or to increased spontaneous NMRs. Septals also responded at higher rates in both operant conditioning (barpresses reinforced with food pellets on a variable interval schedule) and extinction sessions. No difference in suppression in a passive avoidance task was found. Results are discussed in relation to R. A. McCleary's (1966) response disinhibition analysis of septal function, and an habituation hypothesis is considered. (31 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Passive avoidance in syndromes of disinhibition: Psychopathy and extraversion.

According to the physiological animal model proposed by E. E. Gorenstein and J. P. Newman (see record 1980-24372-001), psychopaths and extraverts may be characterized by a common psychological diathesis related to behavioral inhibition. One aspect of this diathesis involves deficient passive avoidance learning, which has been central to explanations of unsocialized and antisocial behavior. In 3 experiments, a passive avoidance task was completed by 90 14–18 yr old males, 40 male university students, and 40 18–50 yr old men and women. Ss were also assessed on measures including the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire and MMPI. Results support the prediction that psychopaths and extraverts would exhibit deficient passive avoidance relative to nonpsychopaths and introverts, respectively. The passive avoidance deficit was particularly evident in tasks that required Ss to inhibit a rewarded response to avoid punishment. The latter finding may be important for explaining the inconsistent results regarding passive avoidance learning in psychopaths. Discussion focuses on the importance of reward in mediating the passive avoidance deficit of disinhibited individuals and on the existence of an indirect relationship between psychopathy and extraversion—one that is consistent with the observed experimental parallels as well as with the more ambiguous evidence regarding a direct correlation between measures of the 2 syndromes. (39 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Predictors of psychopathy and release outcome in a criminal population.

Additional construct validity of R. D. Hare's (see record 1982-02477-001) Psychopathy Checklist (PCL) was sought by comparing empirically derived predictors of recidivism with PCL scores among 93 inmates who were first released on temporary absences and subsequently followed on parole. The PCL proved to be reliable and a more efficient predictor of release outcome than an empirically derived predictive index. Psychopathy ratings predicted outcome for both temporary absence and parole release. PCL scores and actuarial prediction scales of recidivism were found to be highly correlated, even after deleting overlapping items. In addition, psychopathy was significantly related to mean time before recommittal. Significant differences between nonpsychopaths and psychopaths were also found when unequal follow-up time was controlled. Psychopaths were recommitted 4 times more frequently than nonpsychopaths. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Emotion in the criminal psychopath: Startle reflex modulation.

Measured startle-elicited blinks during presentation of affective slides to test hypotheses concerning emotional responding in psychopaths. Ss were 54 incarcerated sexual offenders divided into nonpsychopathic, psychopathic, and mixed groups based on file and interview data. Consistent with findings for normal college students, nonpsychopaths and mixed Ss showed a significant linear relationship between slide valence and startle magnitude, with startle responses largest during unpleasant slides and smallest during pleasant slides. This effect was absent in psychopaths. Group differences in startle modulation were related to affective features of psychopathy, but not to antisocial behavior per se. Psychopathy had no effect on autonomic or self-report responses to slides. These results suggest an abnormality in the processing of emotional stimuli by psychopaths that manifests itself independently of affective report. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Electrodermal activity in schizophrenics: Further considerations.

Discusses a number of reports that challenge the generality of the conclusions of a recent review by R. A. DePue and D. C. Fowles (see record 1973-21232-001) that schizophrenics show both slower habituation than normal Ss for electrodermal activity and a greater frequency of spontaneous electrodermal responses. More generally, there is evidence of abnormally low electrodermal activity and responsiveness among some schizophrenics, and evidence of systematic trends in the behavior of such patients paralleling their physiological abnormalities. It appears that theories of schizophrenia need to account for the occurrence of hyperelectrodermal, hypoelectrodermal, and "paradoxical" electrodermal reactivity and tonic activity in connection with the disorder. (35 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)